World’s smallest transistor
Wow!
Researchers have used the world’s thinnest material to create the world’s smallest transistor, one atom thick and ten atoms wide.
Dr Kostya Novoselov and Professor Andre Geim…at The University of Manchester show that graphene can be carved into tiny electronic circuits with individual transistors having a size not much larger than that of a molecule.
The smaller the size of their transistors the better they perform, say the Manchester researchers.
Four years ago, Geim and his colleagues discovered graphene, the first known one-atom-thick material which can be viewed as a plane of atoms pulled out from graphite. Graphene has rapidly become the hottest topic in physics and materials science.
Now the Manchester team has shown that it is possible to carve out nanometre-scale transistors from a single graphene crystal. Unlike all other known materials, graphene remains highly stable and conductive even when it is cut into devices one nanometre wide.
This means you can make an iPod how small?
Posted: Fri - April 18, 2008 at 12:26 PM